Mini and small self-loading mixers: what the size word actually buys

On this range small is a width, and width is the one dimension that decides whether a machine reaches the pour at all. The narrowest mixer we hold a measured figure for is 1.60 m across; the widest of the measured mixers is 2.30 m. Seven hundred millimetres separates them, which is the difference between a gateway a machine drives through and one it does not. We have found no standard that fixes where small stops, and no definition of a mini self-loading mixer we can put a source against, so on this page small means a measured width and nothing else. It is not a statement about price. No price appears anywhere on this site, for any machine, in any market, because a landed figure depends on specification, port and terms that are settled in a conversation rather than published in a band.

Ten of the sixteen self-loading mixers in our specification records have measured overall dimensions. One of the ten comes from general-arrangement drawings, read twice from two separate documents that agree on seven dimensions, and those drawings separate the height of the machine standing on its tyres from the height with the bucket raised. The other nine come from a single dimension column supplied by the manufacturer, which gives one set of overall dimensions without stating which posture the machine was measured in. Width is barely affected by posture and stands as published; height is affected, so for those nine we do not present the figure as a travelling height. The remaining six mixers have no dimensions we can publish. The same records also cover five crawler dozers, a different machine on a different chassis, which this page sets aside.

The smallest mixer on the published range measures 4.35 m long, 1.60 m wide and 2.45 m high, and discharges 1.0 m³ a batch. It loads itself with its own bucket. It runs 10.5/46-16 off-road tyres, a gearbox with two forward and two reverse gears and a high and low range, and a heavy-duty manganese-steel axle. Its documented standard equipment is an electrophoretic-coated cab, a high-pressure working pump, a piston high-torque hydraulic motor, a reinforced thickened drum base, individually replaceable mixing blades, an LCD driving display, a reinforced heavy-duty chassis, and a high-capacity water tank with a self-priming system. That last item is what matters on a site with no supply laid on: the machine draws its own water instead of waiting on a water truck. The tank's capacity is not stated in our records, so it is not stated here.

What is missing from that machine's record is longer than what is in it. We hold an engine model number and no engine brand, no rated power, no operating weight, no drum volume, no steering type and no drive configuration. Those gaps are why it carries no complete specification table on this site, and they are the subject of a written request to the plant rather than something filled in from a comparable machine. One distinction is worth taking from the figures that do exist: 1.0 m³ is what comes out of the drum, not what the drum holds. On the SLM-18, where both figures are measured, a 2,900 L drum discharges 1.6 to 1.8 m³, and the model numbers on this site are the discharge figure rather than the drum. The capacity guide sets that difference out in full.

More width buys more concrete per batch, and across the nine mixers that share one dimension source the relationship is close to a straight line. At 1.60 m wide the discharge is 1.0 m³; at 1.65 m, 1.3; at 1.80 m, 1.5; at 1.85 m, 2.0; at 1.95 m, 2.4; at 2.10 m, 2.5; at 2.15 m, 3.0 on each of two machines; and at 2.30 m, 3.5. Seven hundred millimetres of extra width across that ladder comes with 2.5 m³ more per batch, a subtraction done here rather than quoted from a source. Length climbs with it, from 4.35 m to 5.45 m, and the recorded overall height from 2.45 m to 2.90 m. The trade is therefore explicit, and you can price it against your own access: each step up is concrete gained at the pour and clearance lost getting to it.

The ladder is not one curve across the whole range, and treating it as one will mislead you. The SLM-18 is 2.21 m wide and 7.06 m long — wider and much longer than the 1.85 m machine — and discharges 1.6 to 1.8 m³ against that machine's 2.0. It belongs to a different design family, and what its extra size carries is documented capability rather than volume: articulated steering, a reversing and drum-monitoring camera system, a drum that lifts and rotates through 270°, an external suction water pump. Batch size also does not tell you output. This site publishes no cubic metres per day, no batches per shift, no cycle time and no fuel consumption, because no source we hold states one, so the arithmetic from batch size to a day's work is yours, with your own haul and your own crew.

Three situations make width the deciding specification rather than a preference. A site reached through an existing gateway, lane or courtyard — an old district, an infill plot, a yard between buildings — where the opening is fixed and a truck mixer either enters or does not. A site with no batching plant within reach, where concrete has to be made where it is poured and the machine has to bring its own mixing and its own water. And work where the pour front moves all day — road, drainage, kerbing, rural self-build — where a static mixer has to be re-sited and a self-loading machine simply drives to the next section. In all three the decisive comparison is the same one: your narrowest point against the machine's overall width.

We can source one half of that comparison and not the other. The machine widths above are declared figures with a document behind them; your gateway, your ramp and your turning space are in no record we hold, and no supplier can tell you a machine fits a site he has not measured. Measure the narrowest point on the route rather than the widest, and measure where the machine will be loaded as well — a lane that admits the machine but leaves nowhere to swing a loading bucket has not solved the problem. We publish no turning radius for any mixer in this range, because no source has given us one, and a turning circle reconstructed from a wheelbase is exactly the kind of figure that reads convincingly and ends against a wall.

For the small mixers in this range the container question is a height question, not a width question. A 40 ft high cube has a door opening of 2.34 by 2.585 m, and taking 50 mm off each dimension as the handling margin a loading crew works to leaves 2.29 m of usable width and 2.535 m of usable height. On width the small machines are nowhere near failing: 1.60 m clears by 690 mm, 1.65 m by 640 mm, 1.80 m by 490 mm, 1.85 m by 440 mm. On height three of those four are out — the machine recorded at 2.75 m stands 215 mm above the usable door height, and the two recorded at 2.80 m stand 265 mm above it. Only the 1.60 by 2.45 m machine clears both tests, and two of those load nose to tail into a 40 ft high cube, taking 8.70 m of a 12.032 m floor.

Two things follow. At the top of the measured ladder width stops being awkward and becomes terminal: the 2.30 m machine stands 10 mm over the usable opening, and no loading trick recovers those 10 mm. A roof can come off, because an open top is loaded from above, but the walls of a box do not move — every standard container is 2.352 m wide inside. So a height failure has answers and a width failure has none. Every machine that fails the door on height alone is quoted on a flat rack, in an open top or roll-on/roll-off, and no container loading figure is published for it. The model-by-model verdict, including the four mixers on this site that get no verdict at all, is in the container guide.

Six of the sixteen mixers in our records have no measured overall dimensions, so the width ladder above covers ten machines and cannot be spoken of as the range. An operating weight is recorded for three of the sixteen, and the narrowest machine is not one of them — which makes the two-per-container figure a statement about geometry alone, with the payload side of that booking unconfirmed until a weight arrives in writing. Rated power is recorded on seven of the sixteen, engine brand on seven, drum volume on four. Wheelbase and wheel track exist on exactly one mixer each. None of it is filled in from a machine of similar size, and a blank on this site means a blank in the documents we hold rather than a figure we have chosen not to print.

One comparison puts the scale of a small machine in proportion better than an adjective can. The SLM-18, the one mixer with a measured wheel track, has 1,600 mm between its wheel centres and 2,210 mm across its widest point. The narrowest mixer's entire overall width is 1,600 mm. Those are not the same measurement and are not interchangeable — one is centre to centre, the other is the widest point on the machine — and the comparison is offered as scale rather than as a specification. But it is the shape of the decision a buyer makes in this category. At the small end the whole vehicle occupies the width the larger machine uses between its wheels, while the larger machine discharges 1.6 to 1.8 m³ against the small one's 1.0.